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There's Nothing "Wrong" With the Gaming Community

Everywhere you look these days, things are sensationalized. The television news stations have discovered that they need flair and fear to keep audience attention; a scary story about babies reacting badly to a vaccine is told to the viewer that it will be told coming up....then told again....and again....and again. They retell stories of violence until some people develop an irrational view of a horrible violent world that's getting worse by the second.

The game community is no different. The same grim stories are repeated and retreaded a million and a half times. The same issues are re-examined ad nauseum.

Gamers, being human beings, often react the same way as any news viewer. One sexual harassment case at a convention is retold and discussed a dozen and a half times and people start looking around at the community and seeing perverts. "The gaming community disgusts me!" some of them say. "What is WRONG with the gaming community?" "Why is the gaming community so sexist?"

Intentional bias articles are created to garner hits to a website. Gamers discuss the issue and ask "why is the game community always fighting?" "What's WRONG with the gaming community?" The same few fanboys comment in every other article. "Why are there so many fanboys? Why can't we just get along?" "What is WRONG with the gaming community?"

But is there really anything "wrong" outside of the typical problems found in every day life? Are there not non-gaming perverts? Are stories not sensationalized elsewhere, and are such stories not the minority (even if those in particular do get more attention because of their outrageous nature)? Are there not fanatics in other facets of life?

I simply don't think there is anything very particularly wrong with the gaming community. Any issues I see here, I see anywhere else. It's a shame to see gamers shaming their own community in particular because of typical activity that defines society as a whole.

We want a fair shake from the world and the way people typically view us, right? Let's start by not viewing ourselves as some sort of sub-human category. Gamers are people.

I love the gaming community but lets face it, it's pretty much impossible to game online now without being subject to verbal abuse regarding ones race, religion and/or gaming ability.

The utterly pointless fanboy wars and blind allegiance to one (and only one) console is worse this gen than it has ever been, the sheer amount of deep rooted, venomous hatred stemming from whatever hunk of plastic produces "teh prettiest picture" is pathetic...

I reference the state of the gaming community today to that of sports fanatics, who use the fact others happen to prefer the competition as ammo to instigate and spread petty hatred.

I'll say it again, I love the gaming community and have met some really cool people right here on N4G, but something needs to be done about those who fan the flames of hate by trolling articles and bash the competition in order to bait fan response.

We have what I consider the best form of entertainment available, I just wish other people would enjoy it and live and let live so to speak, instead of having pointless, petty arguments.

There really are quite a few really nice people on here that often have very informed and well thought out views on gaming as a whole. It's generally easier to tell the ones that have been doing it a while, because they seem to have less hate for the competition.

The internet has dumbed down our society down into a bunch of people who want to debate, yet have no clue on how to do so. Everything has become reactionary, and it's spread by and to the mainstream media as a whole. Since gaming has gone mainstream this gen, it's only natural that we would get it to, particularly since gaming news isn't really all that prolific to begin with.

Trolls have always been around, and it's likely we'll never be rid of them. The only thing that can be done is to ignore them. Realistically though I even get sucked into arguments with them. It does suck though because they often drown out the discussions that are worth having with their vitriol.

In the meantime, all you can do is find those people worth talking to, and build your own community with them, which will likely be more meaningful either way.

I remember the days before Xbox Live, the quake community was fantastic. Not just quake but Kingpin, Unreal Tournament and nearly every game I can think of. When you joined a game everyone said hello, and when you left everyone said goodbye. Mind you, everyone who played online was alot older back then.

Nowadays you get a bunch of racist children and people that are just sickening. I miss the old days, apart from the modems.

The same can be said for a typical sports fan, especially if you include Soccer fans. SilentNegotiator is correct when he says gamers are no different from any other passionate group or basically any human.

As for the journalists, well you got Bill O'Reilly. He's definitely in many people's pocket. Game devs are just like executives looking to make more money by spending less money and cutting corners.

Still, with sports you see fans being rewarded by players and teams improving in terms of proficiency as well as promotion, whereas with games its only been the latter. With things like RRoD, XBL going up in price or even lack of rumble for the PS3 worse examples of fan worship as these things hurt them.

And still the same BS with journalist enforcing a mentality of high expectation and lowered returns as many either work with the industry or are looking to.

I have to disagree.No matter how bad the gaming community seemed before the way it is now is definitely worse.We could have conversations without starting blood feuds and talk about what we like or don't like without having walls of offensive and defense put up in front of you and being assaulted by the force of gamers who write horrible insults and threats if you refuse to go along with what everyone says.Just say that you like the new DMC or say you think the Wii U pad is unnecessary or looks uncomfortable and you will see how much abuse you get. I mean even the trolls have become nothing but blathering idiots who keep shouting 'This sucks or that sucks'. Even when you were trolling long before you at least did it with clever statements or wordplay or something.And comparing it to crazy sports fans doesn't solve or excuse the problem.Just because you accept the fact that gamers behave like maniacs doesn't make it okay.

It's like watching a guy swing a chainsaw around laughing like a crazy person and saying 'It's okay,he always does that'. Saying 'that's just how it is' doesn't excuse it. You should be striving to end the conflicts and make things better not go down the path to hell and say 'It's okay we were going down there anyway'. We were never this bad. No matter how many conflicts my friends and I had over who is better Sonic or Mario it never reached the point that I flung horrible insults at them or wanted to beat them senseless. You must accept the fact that just because you like something doesn't mean everyone else does too. I am sure their are lots of things I like that you many not but I don't hold that against you.Being passionate about something doesn't mean or make it okay to bash my head in the moment I say I don't agree with it.

I think the problem comes in the expression. We don't know how to behave, and the internet is making what is already a bad situation worse because it's giving us seemly unlimited anonymity.

Yes, we are passionate about our hobby, and yes, we would defend it to the death. Problem is, when we go to actually SAY such things and express our views, what does 75% of the comments consist of? Nothing mature and nothing that would tell anyone that we know what we're talking about and that we are acting like the adults in the room.

This is not happening right now. Not to mention that some people's attention spans and knowledge about certain things that could transcend gaming is rather short. Not saying all gamers are this way, but it's a unfortunate side effect of the whole thing. You're going to have some people who should never have access to a keyboard and the internet deciding that they are going to try to speak for and represent all of us before going on a tirade of profanity, personal attacks, and name calling that gets us nowhere. And this is usually the only thing that people outside of the community see out of us because those that CAN make people see us more seriously are those that couldn't be asked to care about certain things enough to say something about it.

The PAX incident last year was a clear example of this. I bet you that if people did more to keep those idiots' hypocritical treatment of Jessica Nigiri in the news (we haven't forgotten about that, by the way, PAX East, and yes, a blog from me is on the way to tell you that we're not going to stand for crap like that again), more would've been done about the treatment of some women at that show (such male chauvinist behavior happened before a few years over at that exact same show...that again, people forgot about when talking about the Jessica incident). But yeah, not enough people cared about that.

What did they care about instead? Jumping on the anti-jailbreaking bandwagon, calling someone a hobbit and wishing death on anyone who dared even questioned anything corporations do about it...all without even the slightest lick that anyone who posted such comments knew what they were even going on about. Yeah, calling someone Frodo and wishing that someone would be gang-raped was MUCH more important than making sure women were treated fairly at a gaming show.

Thus, you see the issue. There IS a problem with the community, but not where you're seeing it. Priorities and behavior are not there right now for the gaming community, and the bad apples are spoiling the bunch.

I really hate to say this, but I sometimes hate having the title of a gamer simply because of the negative stigma that hangs on it these days. I think that's why nintendo had that whole "I'm not a gamer" campaign, because they probably saw how negative that title has become because of those fouled mouthed, sexist, and racist few that ruins it for the whole community.

Gamers are a very passionate bunch of people, but that passion also make a lot of them crazy. Death threats and harassment are all too common stories that happen within the gaming community. People wanted to kill people over Bayonetta 2! If that's not crazy, then I don't know what is.

I do believe with the advent and popularity of online gaming helped spread negativity and distasteful conduct. People can now communicate together and form groups to harass people because a certain game's ending sucked. This generation as a whole was filled with just too many issues and despite it having amazing games, those games won't patch up all that negative stigma the community created. Because of how much the gaming community has changed over this console generation (as well as the trends of DLC and shady business practices), I would say that this is the worse console generation I've experienced.